


Planned In Advance

by rogueofstorms



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Burn The World, Gen, Sort Of, Working with the Enemy, one-shot maybe?, planned it all along
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 13:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12482944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rogueofstorms/pseuds/rogueofstorms
Summary: Well, sort of. A key-points exploration of what Inquisition could have looked like if the Inquisitor was in on the Big Bad's plots from the beginning.





	Planned In Advance

You think I planned this?!

Well, I did. Not that I was going to tell them that. I learned of Corypheus from the Wardens after his death and their involvement with the Champion of Kirkwall. My family - the Trevelyans of the Free Marches - had had an ancestor who joined the Grey Wardens to cover up the shame of being a bastard child, and he had kept very detailed journals. From there it was all too easy to trace Corypheus. I convinced the Ostwick Circle to send me as its representative in the talks at the Conclave. It wasn’t hard. Making contact with Corypheus had been harder - he was a very suspicious sort. Well, he had right to be - I was playing him just as I was now playing this Seeker and Chantry Sister. 

Truth, I didn’t remember exactly how the plan worked out at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Did it matter? No. Corypheus had succeeded, ripping a hole in the Veil and sky to let the Fade bleed through, and it was glorious. I felt _alive_ in a way that was denied to those of the Circle, to most mages for that matter. Corypheus likely thought it an accident that I now held the key to the Fade. Once I had learned of his plan, I knew what I had to do and when. Interrupt the ritual near the end, but at a key point, and the Key would bond to me instead of him. He probably wanted to kill me now. Oh well.

I would play this new-formed Inquisition, pretend to help and close rifts, seal the breach. Once I got my hands on Corypheus’s orb - where _had_ he gotten that? - I would be able to reopen all of it. Tear the Veil into little more than remembered shreds, allow the Fade and the rest of Thedas to be whole again. With luck, as I became more useful to them, they would forget that I had conveniently been there as it happened, conveniently failed to save the Divine. 

I wasn’t corrupted. Crazed perhaps, according to the outside world, but I had never yet made a deal with a demon. And why would I? All they ever want is to take from mages, never fulfilling their ends of bargains completely, never caring if their dupes are slaughtered or made tranquil to remove the taint. 

Those first few weeks just before the Inquisition was formed were the worst. Endless questioning during the day - who are you? Why did you do this? Are you working for anyone? Who sent you? Again and again and again. Stale bread and sulfuric water, punctuated by pain from my left hand as the Key bound itself into me.

When they all thought me asleep a new person was sent into my cell. An elf, lacking in hair, reeking of magic. His magic felt like the new mark I had in my left palm - how interesting. I faked being asleep as he picked up my afflicted hand and studied it. I could feel when he used his magic to tug on the magic of the mark until I whimpered with pain, at which point he stopped pulling. Had he been trying to remove the mark? What power he must have access to to even attempt such a thing.

Days before the elf visited again. This time he stood in a corner as I thrashed through a fever brought on by the mark. He watched me thus every night for a week, and I guess that’s when he finally cracked. In the throes of the fever, he used magic to pin me to the floor of the cell. _Shh_ , he whispered to me, his baritone voice soothing my racing mind. He spoke out loud to himself as he built a working with his magic, saying that he would stabilise the mark so that it wouldn’t be lost, wouldn’t kill me. _Mortals were never intended to access this power_ , he said. I don’t think I was supposed to be listening. _Let me help you_.

Whatever the elf mage did stopped the pain and dulled the fever. Within days I was more rational, more composed. I still refused to answer their questions, and after a while I guess the Seeker and her lady friend decided I really didn’t know anything. They let me out - on one condition. The elf mage had suggested that I was the Key to stopping Corypheus, to undoing what he had done. And so I was on parole.

Fix the breach, and the ladies would keep the mob who came for the Divine from killing me. The breach flared and I was driven to my knees in pain. Lady Seeker pulled me up and hauled me up the mountain, back to the Temple.

Afterwards I found the elf standing outside his assigned housing. The pilgrims now believed me to be some avatar of Andraste, and the blasphemy made me laugh. Me? The Herald? No one would actually choose me to be anything. All of this was a lie.

  _I know what you said to me in the dark_ , I told the elf. He pulled me into his house.

_You were not intended to remember such things,_ he said.

_Mortals not supposed to know anything?_ I laughed bitterly. _What was that about helping me?_  

_What do you want, human child?_  

_I want to watch the world burn. I want to free the Fade and become what mages are only shallow reflections of_. 

The elf appeared to consider my words. He cast a handful of spells and suddenly the outside world was quiet. 

_Let us speak more plainly in the Fade_ , he said. I nodded my assent and everything went black. 

When I opened my eyes, we appeared to be in a mirage-version of the same house. 

_What, no fancy castles, mr-god-pretender?_  

The elf sucked in a breath - had I insulted him? How? 

_I am no god,_ he said. _But I was once thought to be. The elves know me better as Fen’Harel_. 

I laughed. And laughed. And laughed.   _Pull the other one_. 

_The orb Corypheus used was mine. I did not think a mortal would be able to wield it so. In the end, you are the reason he failed._  

_More’s the pity. I only wanted to be the one in control_. 

Fen’harel looked at me like a curiosity. _You truly want to break down the Veil?_

  _Freedom is more than just being able to move your meatsack around, godling_.

  _Undoing the Veil is something I have sought for years. Assist me willingly or not, that Key is my power and one way or another I shall succeed_.

  _No need for threats, godling, I’m game._

 

Together we would set the world on fire.


End file.
